3D Mine Storm
Background Mine Storm is a clone of Asteroids that was built in to all Vectrex consoles, which involved players clearing out mine fields full of mines that hatch from dots on playfields. Different types of mines appear through the game. 3D Mine Storm was the pack-in game for the Vectrex peripheral of the 3D Imager, having differences in gameplay. It was released in 1983 by GCE. Gameplay The player controls a ship through multiple mine fields destroying all mines on each field to progress to the next field. The game will start with the enemy minelayer seeding the first mine field. Mines are left in three different levels or planes per field. The player's ship will come into view after all the mines have been activated and the minelayer has left the field. Using the joystick to rotate the ship, the player can maneuver through each field using button three for forward thrust. Buttons one and two are used to mysteriously move to a new location on the screen. This must be used cautiously, as it might put the player's ship directly in contact with a mine. Button four is used to fire at the mines. When shooting a large mine, it will break into two smaller ones. Once these are destroyed, mines from the second plane will move up to the playfield. When all mines from the second plane are destroyed, mines from the third plane will come into the playfield. As each level progresses, the minelayer will return to personally fly at the player's ship. It must be fired at to be destroyed. Once all mines on all three planes are destroyed, the player will immediately travel to the next mine field. There are 16 basic mine fields, with each becoming progressively difficult. Each mine field will start with 12 large mines across three planes. The first field has only floating mines, but each new field has a different combination of mines. There are four kinds of mines which will appear at different stages of the game: 1. Floating mines - These are 'dumb' mines which simply drift through space 2. Fireball mines - These mines hurl a fireball at the player's ship as soon as they are hit. The fireball can be avoided or destroyed by being fired at. 3. Magnetic mines - These mines follow the player anywhere they go until they are destroyed. 4. Magnetic Fireball mines - These mines have traits of both Magnetic and Fireball mines. If the player is hit by a mine, one ship will be lost. The minelayer will reseed the field and another chance will be given for the player to clear it. Each game begins with three ships with a bonus one awarded after clearing out four mine fields. Controls In-game *Move ship left and right - joystick or d-pad left and right *Escape - buttons 1 and 2 *Thrust - button 3 *Fire - button 4 Trivia *3D Mine Storm was programmed by Bill (William) Hawkins, who also programmed 3D Crazy Coaster. * A list of credits is hidden in the ROM at 0x13FB: "PROGRAMMED BY WILLIAM HAWKINS 1983 VECTREX AND IMAGER BY JOHN ROSS" Category:Multi-directional shooter Category:Simulation Category:Vectrex Category:Videogame Category:Developed by General Consumer Electronics Category:1983